Anybody who loves serialized stories and episodic dramas will be excited to learn that Tor is experimenting with publishing the next John Scalzi book first in serialized form, as a set of e-books, and then later in collected print and e-book editions — similar to the way that comics come out in single issues and are collected in trades.

In a press release, Tor senior editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden explains why The Human Division, the next book in the Old Man's War series, is coming out as a serial first:

The Human Division will be an experiment: an episodic novel, released initially in digital, serialized form. Currently the plan is to publish these episodes weekly between December 2012 through February 2013. Like the episodes of a good high-end cable drama, each one will have enough internal integrity to work as an enjoyable chunk of story on its own, but each will advance a ‘season'-long storyline as well.

And he hopes that the price to buy all of the episodes of the serialized novel will be about the same as the cost of the final e-book, although there may be a teeny bit more material in the final collected edition. [Media Bistro and Publishers Weekly]